Ode to a Little Red Dog~

A jug fills drop by drop. Buddha~

Maybe it's because you were an urchin, the only one to survive the litter. Or, maybe it's because you were left on our property— your mother off looking for food— and I took you away from her before you were ready. Maybe if you hadn't been born in the year of the rabbit…

All these maybes cannot erase the fact that you are gone: dead and buried February 18, 2009; poisoned by rat bait left too close for you to resist. Whether anything would have changed the course of your history we will never know.

I remember when we found you on that rainy afternoon ten plus years ago. You crawled out from under our table saw covered in sawdust from the wood that eventually gave you your name: Kashá. Alan thought you were a wild animal, which of course you were. We dried you off, bundled you up, and took you home, thus taking responsibility for your welfare and binding our hearts forever to yours.

You watched us build this house in Punta Uva. You came faithfully each day as we struggled to get it right. When it was done you found a spot on the veranda where you could watch both sides of the house to keep guard over us. When we left to go north to work for six month stretches you were disappointed but never complained. You lived with our hired man, never forgetting who we were when we returned. Your welcoming licks and wiggling whines were enough to make me never want to leave you. Ever. You were an outside dog at first, but were so polite and such good company you became an inside dog. Spoiled, some would say.

But what is it about you that always made me have safety dreams about you? Why did I always see tragedy when I thought about transplanting you from this place to another? Now I will never have to worry, but instead I am bereft.

I have never known this house without you and now it echoes with longing. Everywhere I look, a memory flits just outside my grasp. The pain sometimes so deep I am afraid I will not come up for air. Today I took flowers to your grave out in the potreo. Out where the squirrels will run over your head teasing you to get up and stalk them once again. Yesterday, Alan and I planted a Kashá sapling that will grow tall and strong off your body. We burned incense to help you through bardo, and I will come often and spend time with you as you make the passage.

I could use a little help myself and know if you were here you would sense my sadness and try to cheer me. The Buddha says: "Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without." And sometimes I can see you in my mind's eye and know you are well and don't need my tears, so it is really only for myself that I morn. Left behind to suffer.

I have always strived to attain the Buddhist path of non-attachment, but your death has made it clear that I know no more about non-attachemnt than I know about speaking the Tibetan language. It is all intellectual, this detachment business. The pain and suffering I feel is surely what the Buddha talked about when he said: "He who loves 50 people has 50 woes; he who loves no one has no woes."

I am drowning, little Kashita, hunkered down in the rain. Waiting it out.

One day I will feel less pain. I will feel less empty and will not brim over with tears when I mention you. I will not, like today, realize that the banana cake we ate for dessert— a favorite of yours— was made before you died, and that I'd offered you some crumbs a little over a week ago. There will be many things like this, I know.

And perhaps we will see each other in another life. You will be going around again, I think. You came a long way in this lifetime, learning to be braver than you'd like, learning not to feel abandoned. But food was a nemesis for you, like alcohol to the addict.

I will be coming around again too, it's clear to me now. I have not seen enlightenment. Have not learned non-attachment.

Right now I ache.

Rats! It's My Domain~

It's been quite a week.

I decided— apparently, somewhat arrogantly —that I should have my own domain name. I own this blog, but thought how nice it would be for people to be able to access me by myname.com rather than myname.blogspot.com. I found out I could buy my very own domain name for $10 a year. Pretty cheap.

Why not?

So I purchased the domain name scmorgan.com. (There is a long story as to why I can’t have sarahmorgan.com that involves an Englishwoman who writes bodice rippers.) Once the domain was purchased, I went about changing my scmorgan.blogspot address over to scmorgan.com. I got a message "another blog is hosted at this address." Well, unless I'm totally nuts, that’s me!

I tried and tried without success Others helped and ran into the same issue. Then I began pawing around inside my new domain and found the Host Records. This area looked really serious so I closed the door. I read blogs about the difficulty, which is apparently not a rare occurrence. www.nitecruzr.net has an entire blog dedicated to Blogger and Google domain issues. There I found long discussions on the dreaded ERROR 404 message as well as the one I was dealing with.

I asked power posters for help and got some assistance there. With instruction, I went back into the bowels of the beast–– The Host Records–– found my blogspot address and, holding my breath, deleted it. Then, according to instructions, waited two days for the servers of the world to recognize me, and tried again to have blogspot take my new address. Now it says: SERVER CANNOT BE FOUND.

So, I’m making headway of a sort I guess. But I have spent days on end twiddling with this irritating little task. Not writing my blog.

Not writing, period.

Reviewing Quoz

Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey by William Least Heat-Moon

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
In the coastal community where I live, a sign at the entrance of a small hotel reads: A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arrival. It sums up the difference between travelers and tourists, and perhaps quantifies the spirit with which one ought to pick up... Roads To Quoz: An American Mosey.

This is not a book for the impatient....

Please go to The Internet Review of books for the complete review.
www.internetreviewofbooks.com will get you to the Web site.

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View all my reviews.

Under the Weather~

Costa Rica was hit with a cold front and strong winds last week, leaving 200,000 people without light in five provinces. Winds up to 85 km per hour were recorded, knocking down trees and tearing out utilities across the country. The photo above, courtesy of our newspaper La Nacion, is close to Matina and our usual road from the Atlantic coast to the capital, San José. Needless to say, we have been at home and staying put.

Here in Punta Uva the storm raged for days on end. The weather people didn’t seem to be able to pronosticar further than two days, always promising it would abate by then. It did not. It was actually worse than the rains we had in December. It rained so hard that our potrero filled with water and the whole place looked like a lake. I spent most days mopping up water off our wooden veranda and trying to keep things from blowing away. The rest of the time we huddled under blankets, wearing turtlenecks, long pants, and socks. I know this sounds lightweight to you people in the northern climes, but it was cold!

Yesterday was the first day it was clear enough to go to the beach. Alan took the two dogs for their usual afternoon romp and said trash from the ocean had been thrown fifty meters inland, sand was hurled over the little road that hugs the coastline in front of our house, and everyone had plastic covering their porches. A disaster zone.

Today the meteorological people say the cold front has left and there will be clearing over the next few days. That means the mosquito population with bloom like thistle down, but at least it will be warm.

In all that rain our little pond and bog garden acted as they were designed to: the overflow from the pond siphoned off into the bog garden and it, in turn, ran off when it got full. Alan found some lovely water plants in one of our drainage ditches and transplanted them in the pond. One is a lily of sorts that blooms only at night.

The other is this pretty water hyacinth that surprised us this morning with a bloom or two. The dragonfly on the grasses has been there all day. We thought he might have frozen to death in the cold. I hope not! We will need him to do his work when the mosquitoes hatch.